Glossary

Source reduction

Source reduction is the reduction of materials coming into the system. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines source reduction as “activities designed to reduce the volume or toxicity of waste generated, including the design and manufacture of products with minimum toxic content, minimum volume of material, and/or a longer useful life.” The two interesting components of this definition are volume and toxicity. This means that an organization does not have to solely focus on reducing volumes for source reduction initiatives but could focus efforts on reducing the negative impacts on the environment of those same volumes. This may mean a reduction of pallets entering a building or of flash being generated from a mold.

Reuse

Reuse is the actual reuse of a material in its present form. Some examples are printing draft copies on the backside of previously used paper, using incoming pallets as outgoing pallets, or using incoming boxes as collection...

United States Environmental Protection Agency (2003) Municipal solid waste generation, recycling, and disposal in the United States: facts and figures for 2003. United States environmental protection agency, Washington, DCGoogle Scholar